It is impossible to know the Saviour
without longing to make Him known to others. His unspeakable love
claims the utmost devotion of every ransomed heart, and kindles a
desire to make Him known far and wide among the sinners for whom He
died. Thus the woman of Sychar cannot rest until she has made an
appeal to the people of her city: “Come, see a man who told me all
things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?” (John 4: 29). Again,
Andrew has no sooner found the Messiah than he runs for his brother
Peter to share the blessing (see John 1: 41). Similarly, not long
after Philip has beheld the beauty of Christ he is found bringing
Nathanael to the Saviour (see John 1: 45).

I appeal to every believing heart: isn’t this your
cherished desire? Haven’t you deep longings to make known your
Saviour’s name in all its living power? Wouldn’t you be delighted to
see multitudes at His feet, joyful in His salvation and rapturous
with His praise? Doesn’t your spirit leap with joy at the thought?
Sometimes God’s witnesses were impelled only by a command from
without (see Jonah 1: 2), but in the genuine Christian
there is also a constraint of love within (see 2 Cor.
5: 14). Jonah wasn’t interested in the plight of the Ninevites
before a holy God––our hearts should go out in love to every unsaved
soul.

It is our blessed privilege to sound out the word of the Lord (see
1 Thess. 1: 8) and to hold forth the word of life (see Phil. 2: 16).
However, this demands a path of decision and self–denial from which
our hearts often shrink, and thus the desire to speak of Christ is
nipped in the bud. The sword of violent persecution is sheathed in
many parts of the world these days, but Satan has found a more
potent means of silencing our lips in the fear of misapprehension
and ridicule. How often “It will be thought out of place” and “They
will think me odd and peculiar” have closed our mouths! Shame on our
coward hearts! Let us cry to the Lord that we may speak “the word of
God with boldness” (Acts 4: 31). It was the earnest desire of the
apostle that he might open his mouth boldly to make known the
mystery of the glad tidings: “that I may be bold in it as I ought to
speak” (Eph. 6: 20). This spiritual courage is what we need. Not the
forward flippancy of the flesh that irritates without convicting,
but the calm assertiveness of one who can say ‘I have a message from
God’.

Nor let us be discouraged by the consciousness of our own
weakness––rather let us glory in it as that which makes room for
Christ’s power. How sad that we should be considering difficulties
while souls are perishing all around us! These things would never
have a place in our minds if self was not before us instead of
Christ. Why should we calculate our abilities and resources, as if
we were sent out to war in our own strength? Haven’t we received the
Holy Spirit to empower us to be witnesses to Christ? Then let us lay
aside indifference and slothfulness, and be like one who said “For
this cause I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that
they also may obtain the salvation which [is] in Christ Jesus
with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2: 10).

The sovereignty of God in grace was not distorted by the apostle
into an excuse for idleness and indifference, but instead formed the
spring of an energy in service which never tired. God’s sovereignty
is a blessed fact pregnant with encouragement to every worker in the
Gospel field. To know that there are elect souls that God will
bless, and that if we do not seek them out God will send somebody
else to do it, ought to fill our hearts with prayer that we may be
guided to the spot where we shall find them.

Oh brethren, this is a day of good tidings––let us not hold our
peace! May we arise to “do [the] work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:
5), and imitate the blessed example of those believers who “went
everywhere preaching the word” (Acts 8: 4 AV). Let us not attempt to
cast off the responsibility of this great privilege and ask in
guilty indifference “am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4: 9). All of
us need to consider those solemn and striking words in Proverbs 24:
“Deliver them that are taken forth unto death, and withdraw not from
them that stagger to slaughter. If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it
not, will not he that weigheth the hearts consider it? And he that
preserveth thy soul, he knoweth it; and he rendereth to man
according to his work” (v 11, 12).

The word to us all then would be: “So then, my beloved brethren, be
firm, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord, knowing
that your toil is not in vain in [the] Lord” (1 Cor. 15: 58).
Remember that he that “goeth forth and weepeth, bearing seed for
scattering; he cometh again with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves”
(Ps. 126: 6). However, we cannot be too solemnly reminded that
gospel testimony in conjunction with a worldly walk has a terribly
hardening effect on sinners. If like Lot we live near the world and
like the world, the world soon comes to the conclusion that there is
not much in Christianity after all. Small wonder that both loving
invitations and solemn warnings alike fail to awaken souls when they
come from those who are identified with the world! In Lot’s case “he
was as if he jested, in the sight of his sons–in–law” (Gen. 19: 14).
It is the one who comes to the world as Jonah went to Nineveh––out
of the jaws of death, in resurrection power, a man of another
sphere, without a single moral link with the scene against which he
announced judgment––whose testimony produces a mighty result. May
there be a complete divorce between us and the ways of the world,
and in the power of this Nazariteship may we bear witness to sinners
of redemption accomplished and judgement approaching.